Commercial products available for the care of clothing and fabrics in the home are well known. These products include liquid, powder and tablet detergents, liquid and sheet fabric softeners and other various products. Professional services, such as dry cleaners, are also widely available for cleaning garments subject to shrinkage or for those that are too delicate for common washer/dryer cycles. Typically, desired results from dry cleaning/laundering clothing is stain removal, odor removal, softening, static removal and reduced wrinkling. It is not uncommon for a garment that has recently been cleaned but briefly used to lose those properties that are generally associated with freshly cleaned clothing. Indeed, depending on the environment a fabric is subjected to, odors and wrinkles can quickly render the fabric “unclean” in the eye of the user. For example, a relatively brief exposure to tobacco smoke can leave a noticeable lingering odor on otherwise clean clothing. It is also common for clean clothing to become wrinkled before they are worn, such as when the clothes are packed in a suitcase for travel. Typically, these otherwise clean clothes are either tolerated by the user, ironed, or sent back through an entire cleaning process. Therefore, there is a need for a convenient, cost effective and efficient means for reviving clothing that is not in need of a complete laundering or dry cleaning cycle.
At least one commercially available product, marketed by The Procter & Gamble Company under the name “Dryel”, seeks to allow for treatment of clothing in the home dryer. U.S. Pat. No. 5,681,355 is marked on the product and is incorporated herein by reference. The Dryel product consists of a plastic bag, a premoistened cloth, bottled stain removal solution and an absorbent pad for use with the stain removal solution. The user is instructed to: 1) completely remove spots and stains prior to placing garments in the bag, preferably by placing the absorbent pad under the garment; 2) add one to four garments to the bag; 3) insert a pre-moistened cloth into the bag containing the garments; 4) seal the bag; 5) tumble the bag, garments and cloth in the dryer for 30 minutes at medium to high heat; and 6) hang the garments promptly to help decrease wrinkling. Users of the Dryel product have complained about the need for a bag and its limited capacity and the potential for entrapment, rather than removal, of particulates. Also, the use of the bottle/pad combination to remove stains adds to the complexity of the process. Therefore, there is also a need for a home garment freshening process and product that does not have the known drawbacks of the Dryel product. Such a product and process would preferably eliminate the need for a garment bag and simplify the freshening process.
It is also known to use chemicals in clothes dryers to soften, freshen and reduce static on garments. Fabric softener dryer sheets have been used for these purposes for decades and are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos.: 4,237,155; 4,238,531; 4,327,133; 4,421,792, 5,094,761; 5,234,610; 5,348,667; 5,376,287; and 6,254,932; all of which are incorporated herein by reference. To be effective, however, dryer sheets generally need to interact with damp clothing in order to deliver their intended benefits. As such, these dryer sheets are particularly suited for processing garments after removal from the washing machine and not for dry clothing in need of freshening.
It is also known to cleanse, soften and freshen dry fabrics in clothes dryers as disclosed in e.g. in U.S. Pat. Nos.: 6,243,969; 5,942,484; 6,033,729; 6,315,800; 5,658,651 and PCT W099/19452. Unfortunately these techniques are disadvantageous because of the propensity of the surfactants, dispersing agents or cationic fabric softeners contained in some of these compositions to leave stains on the fabrics being treated. In other cases (e.g. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,658,651 and 6,254,932) a bag is necessary to contain the garments being treated and is inconvenient to the users. In another case (e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 6,243,969) the high levels of water used inconveniently lengthens the drying time and may cause spotting on silks and other moisture sensitive fabrics.
Therefore, there is need for a fabric freshening product that can deliver deodorization and dewrinkling benefits to relatively dry clothing.